Race to develop self-driving cars heats up

U.S. companies are leading the way. Last year, Google Inc. posted a video on YouTube showing a car traveling on its own while its “driver” eats a hamburger with his hands completely off the steering wheel. The clip, covering a slice of the firm’s 200,000 miles of computer-led driving tests on public roads, has been viewed almost 5 million times. Google is aiming to introduce the technology by 2017, while General Motors Co. has announced a plan to put its own automated driving technology into practical use in the second half of the 2010s.More>>